Monday, March 27, 2006

Gallery Show: Nan Goldin

A few weeks ago, in the midst of everything else, I received the following invite from French writer Ariel Kenig. Since I was in Chicago I wasn't able to attend the opening, but the show continues until April 22:

From Matthew Marks' Gallery's website:

Matthew Marks is pleased to announce Nan Goldin: Chasing a Ghost, the next exhibition at his gallery at 522 West 22nd Street. This will be the artist’s first show in New York in three years.

The central work in the exhibition will be Sisters, Saints, & Sibyls, a landmark new multimedia installation that focuses on the experience of “women who are trapped, literally and figuratively, in both psychological and mythical contexts.” This three-screen projection was commissioned by the Festival d’Automne in Paris, where it was presented in October of 2004, and it is now being exhibited in the United States for the first time. Thematically, the installation explores Goldin’s personal narrative of her sister Barbara’s institutionalization and suicide at an early age, presented alongside tracings of both the mythological history of Saint Barbara and the artist’s own contemporary history of hospitalization. She writes, “I intend to explore the relationship between the story of my sister, myself, and Saint Barbara, and, more generally, the parallel between saints and modern rebellious women.” Technically, Sisters, Saints, & Sibyls is the first installation by the artist to include moving pictures and a fully narrative score and voiceover; it is thus the first significant foray into cinema that the artist has made in her career. This new form is a natural development of her slideshow presentations, like The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, for which she first became well-known.

Goldin will also be exhibiting over three dozen new color photographs made during the past three years, including a number of new landscapes and a group of pictures that continue to explore the life of the artist’s nephew, Simon. Five large-scale triptychs stemming from Sisters, Saints, & Sibyls will be included as well.

This is the artist’s sixth exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery since 1992. Goldin’s work was the subject of a major touring retrospective exhibition organized by the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris; the exhibition traveled to the Reina Sofía, Madrid; Fundação de Serralves, Porto; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; and Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw. In addition, Goldin’s work has recently been included in exhibitions at the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal; the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Boston; the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; the Art Institute of Chicago; and, here in New York, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art. This year, her work will be on view at the Grey Art Gallery, New York, and the Grimaldi Forum, Monaco.

Nan Goldin: Chasing a Ghost will be on view at the Matthew Marks Gallery located at 522 West 22nd Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), through April 22, 2006. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 11:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M.